Comic page panel layout tips?

[Darth_Biomech]

The only ones I know of is "the size of the panel shalt match the importance and\or scale of what's happening in it" and "thou shalt avoid more than two panels sharing a corner", but I'm sure there are more rules and guides besides that?

[SagaHolmgaard]

Well, there are plenty of ways to design your page layout. It's a bit hard to give one complete answer tbh xD

We're on a site that's putting a lot of energy into getting people to use its app, so scroll/webtoon format has to be mentioned. It has some useful tools for pacing. You can add a lot of space between the panels so that the reader has to scroll to see the next panel. Gives a sense of time passing, or time moving in slow motion, or moving extra fast, depending on what the rest of the layout does.

There are also ways to create a sense of stability/predictability with your layout. Making every panel the SAME size (rather than important-is-bigger) makes the comic feel like it's moving on at a more steady page. This is often easier to read for people that aren't used to reading more complicated comic pages (yes, that is a skill that you learn), so here it's worth thinking about your target audience. (And then you can BREAK that predictability, and make your reader really feel the effect of whatever exciting plot twist you're pulling!)

Even making webcomics, I think it's interesting to study how page layouts have looked over time. There are a lot of creative things you can use yourself out there. Here's an article talking about different layout techniques

[Darth_Biomech]

You can add a lot of space between the panels so that the reader has to scroll to see the next panel. Gives a sense of time passing, or time moving in slow motion, or moving extra fast, depending on what the rest of the layout does.

Or cheat with drawing less panels that you would need to otherwise . There were some of these webtoon comics where almost 70% is just empty space.

[rajillustration]

It's not a hardset rule by any means but I like the "dynamic scenes look more dynamic if they're in panels that aren't square" rule, where you kinda tilt that panel edge to make a rhombus that breaks the repetition of squares: instant interest and energy.

[kaetana]

One piece of panel layout advice I've seen (and gone against by accident before) is to avoid layouts where it's unclear to the reader which panel is next in the order. Here's the easiest way to accidentally cause that:

That said you can still make that layout work depending on the content of the panels, by using speech bubbles or the figures in the panels to draw the eye in the correct direction.